SRF 4 News runs continuous news coverage in German, covering politics, the economy and current affairs for German-speaking Switzerland without the music, talk shows or entertainment segments that fill most general radio schedules. It streams free anywhere in the world on Radio Shuffle, no FM dial or app required.
The station launched on 5 November 2007 under the name DRS 4 News, becoming Switzerland's first dedicated news radio station. Switzerland's Federal Council had granted the licence specifically to meet what regulators described as the public's growing appetite for up-to-the-minute news, issuing it alongside a sister licence for the English-language World Radio Switzerland at the same time. From the start, the station skipped FM entirely, reaching listeners only through DAB digital radio, cable, satellite and the internet, a distribution choice that looked unusual in 2007 and looks considerably more ordinary now.
Production originally ran out of Bern under a small core team of around a dozen journalists led by Lis Borner, before SRF relocated the entire news operation, roughly 70 staff, to Zurich starting around December 2019. The station itself was renamed SRF 4 News when Schweizer Radio DRS became SRF in 2011, carrying the same rolling-news mission under new branding.
Running a dedicated all-news station is expensive, and SRF has had to acknowledge that directly: cost-cutting measures announced in February 2025 trimmed back more than two hours of live morning programming on the station. Even with that adjustment, SRF 4 News remains one of the few European public broadcasters still committed to a continuous news-only format, built for listeners who want headlines and analysis on demand rather than waiting for the next scheduled bulletin.